I am looking to change from my Nexus One but I don't want to go top end as I feel for me it is a waste of money. I had a Galaxy S II some time ago but sent it back as I felt I wasn't doing enough with it to warrant the cost of keeping it and I didn't like the large size much. I know a few people on here like phones and keep up with them more than I do so what do you think I should do. Some options I have found.. HTC One V - Only a single core CPU and when I had a legend in the past I found the antenna to be a bit poor, this could have been fixed but I am a little worried. Sony Xperia U - Looks OK but Sony don't seem to have too big a name in the Android world. Nokia Lumia 800 - Spoke to a couple of people who really like having it and say they like the live tiles a lot but I am really wary of getting a M$ powered phone. Any ideas will be appreciated, my current contract is up so I can get it any time and these phones can all be gotten for free on any network for no more than £26/month.
I've always like the Sony Ericsson designs and when it comes to UI skins, I prefer the Sony one over HTC's Sense theme. I do like the look of the Xperia U.
The one thing I didn't mention above is that I am on Vodafone and the only phones they don't do is Sony phones so I would have to change. T-Mobile are giving it away for free on a £21/month contract with 300 minutes and unlimited texts which is what I get now from Vodafone. Its only 250MB data but I don't ever have data turned on, I think in the last 2 years I probably turned on mobile data no more than 10 times. For £26/month they give 750MB data if I really felt i needed it. To be honest I do find the signal rubbish on Vodafone and the combined T-Mobile + Orange network would be a plus.
Also the phone has to perform well as a web browser, at home I use my phone 95% of the time for anything I go online for.
Well web browsing can be catered for with any of the browsers on the Play store. If you update to ICS then the stock browser will sync bookmarks with chrome on your desktop. chrome for android does that but also has other features, but that's only available for ICS anyway.
Xperia U is supposed to get ICS before the end of June so next week. At the moment it is probably my first choice because of its dual core CPU and good size. Just waiting for someone to tell me how bad it is.
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_u-review-770p9.php http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_v-review-750p8.php It looks like The Xperia U has a removable battery, which is a plus but doesn't have ICS out of the box. There should be an OTA update available soon though, my Arc has it already. The new Sony chargers also let you fully charge the phone in an hour, which is pretty snazzy. Outperforms the one V in pretty much all the benchmarks on gsmarena.
Oh sweet.. people who actually have/will get Sony Android phones. It seems like you guys only exist in Europe and Asia.
iPhone is too expensive and I am not a fan of iOS. On the phone to Vodafone who seem keen to keep me, trying to swing a free HTC One S on my £26/month contract. Edit: The deal is done.
Good call, the one S is pretty awesome. You should unlock the bootloader and root. Then you can fiddle about with roms
I had a quick play with it at lunch time and it was nice, very fast. ICS didn't feel so tacked on as I found it did with the Galaxy SII but I suppose being built with that in mind helped. Won't do too much with it for the first 7 days incase I do decide to send it back. I think it comes with some free urbeats headphones to pair with its beats audio software which also helps the fact that I haven't been able to use my iPod since my Sennheisers broke before Xmas.
The HTC One S is considered mid-range? In the U.S., unlocked versions are only $50 less ($475) than the non-subsidized version of the iPhone 4S ($525) .
To get the iPhone 4S for free you need to take out a £41/month* contract, the One S is free on a £31/month contract but I got it for £26/month as Vodafone wanted to keep my business. I would class it as mid range Android yes. High end I would class phones such as Samsung Galaxy SIII, HTC One X & Sony Xperia S. * I managed to get my wife a 4S for free on a £36/month contract but that is harder now unless you go to one of the budget networks.
well he did end up getting it for free so that's what he really cared about. compared to the htc one x, i suppose it could be considered mid range.
I typically think of the non-subsidized cost as the range. For example, the non-subsidized iPhone 4S on Cricket or Virgin/Sprint in the U.S. will cost you more $$ up front, but the overall cost of using the phone for two years will end up being roughly half of what a 2 year subsidized contract would be.
A HTC One S here will cost £360 - £370, an iPhone 4S cost £499. At £26/month I would pay back £624 over 2 years for the One S so that means my calls, texts and data are costing me £10/month when you take £370 off of the 2 year running cost. A SIM only deal with one the budget networks will cost about £10-£12/month for the sort of tarriff I am on but the big ones like Vodafone will be £15-£20/month so actually I am not really losing any money here. Normally you have to pay £31/month to get it for free but I refused to pay that. Another bonus with the HTC is the 2 year warranty, you only get one year with Apple. My wife's 3GS ran fine for 2 years but who is to say that some don't die in the 13th month? The only saving grace would be that you can downgrade your contract after 12 months so even if you were forced to stay in the contract for another 11 months after a phone failing you could theoretically do it on one of the rock bottom tariffs. Anyway, all I was interested in was getting a free phone for £26/month and in the end I ended up getting a pretty decent one. You seem to have a bit more leverage with the Android phones over an iPhone but Apple being so expensive to buy from is probably a big part of that.